The Internet comprises a vast number of computers and computer networks that are interconnected through communication links. The interconnected computers exchange information using various services. In particular, a server computer system, referred to herein as a web server, may connect through the Internet to a remote client computer system, referred to herein as a requesting device. The requesting device may request and receive, from the web server, web sites containing one or more graphical and textual web pages of information. A request is made by visiting the web site's address, known as a Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”). Upon receipt, the requesting device can display the web pages. The request and display of the web site's content are typically conducted using a browser. A browser is a special-purpose application program that effects the requesting of web pages and the displaying of web page content.
The information on web pages is in the form of programmed source code that the browser interprets to determine what to display on the requesting device. The source code may include document formats, objects, parameters, positioning instructions, and other code that is defined in one or more web programming or markup languages. One web programming language is HyperText Markup Language (“HTML”), and all web pages may use it to some extent. HTML uses text indicators called tags to provide interpretation instructions to the browser. The tags specify the composition of design elements such as text, images, shapes, hyperlinks to other web pages, programming objects such as JAVA applets, form fields, tables, and other elements. By default, the browser processes HTML instructions in the order they are listed, so that elements appear on the web page according to the HTML processing flow. HTML can be used to establish design element positioning in combination with Cascading Style Sheets (“CSS”) or a number of other technologies to ascribe either a relative or an absolute position of the element on the web page, as depicted on the requesting device. Relative positioning of an element retains the element within the HTML processing flow, moving the element a proscribed number of pixels horizontally or vertically away from the place the element otherwise would have appeared. In contrast, absolute positioning places the element a proscribed number of pixels from the top-left (or top-right in countries with right-to-left reading direction) corner of the web page.
When constructing a web site, many users, rather than directly write the code that makes up the web site, use tools that assist in the design and construction of the web site. These tools, sometimes referred to as web site builders, allow for the construction of web sites without manual code editing. The tools usually provide what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) interfaces enabling the user's to construct web sites by dragging and placing different content, such as text, images, video, and the like, directly onto a webpage. As the user constructs their web site using the web site builder's interfaces, the structure of the web pages being constructed is saved. After the user has finished constructing their web site using the web site builder, the user can save the web site and, in some cases, publish the constructed web site to the Internet. In many cases, web site builders use proprietary code structures to store the content of the constructed web site. It is only when the user elects to publish their web site that the proprietary code is converted into a standard web language (e.g., HTML) that is suitable for publication to a web server.
Although many web site builder applications exist, they generally lack the capability to import existing web site content. As such, if a user wishes to build a web site using a particular web site builder, the user must start from the very beginning by entering all content into the web site builder manually. Although the web site builder may be provide pre-made templates, for example, if the user has an existing web site, the user cannot import that existing web site directly into the web site builder.